I will agree with you...you cannot say what you say without sounding like a "dick." You haven't read any of the Marvel Illustrated, Dabel Bros or Stephen King comics that have come out, I'm guessing; yet, you try and tell everyone your opinion of it.
Hey, that's funny, because I actually did read them. When I first started venturing into the broader world of comics (i.e., not Star Wars, Batman, Green Lantern, and Flash), I really had no idea what I liked, so I would read anything. I got really into Action Philosophers, and I got into Love and Capes (bad idea, apparently). I tried Usagi Yojimbo (hated it), I tried that weird Rush City comic that DC was doing (didn't love it, didn't hate it). And I tried those Marvel Illustrated books. I didn't like them, they seemed to present an obvious chilling effect on literacy, and they didn't seem like they made sense. And the bottom line is, for purposes of this discussion, adaptations do not very often make classics. There are exceptions (To Kill A Mockingbird film, Apocalypse Now film), but in comics, I don't think I know of any. And I just hate everything the Dabels do, not because of how terrible they are as people, but because I
did try out that Anita Blake thing. I still have a few issues of it somewhere. It blew. And there was nothing artistic about it.
So, I give you something of "an even slightly elevated artistic quality," and you (which I knew you would) shot it down without even being somewhat familiar with the product.
See, I don't think you did present me with that. I did not "shoot it down," I'm not "unfamiliar with the product." I told you why I didn't consider those things to be of "an even slightly elevated artistic quality." Sorry, that's not what Anita Blake is to me, that's not what the Illustrated Classics are to me, that's not what the MAX comics are to me, that's not what the Dabels are to me.
BTW, I've read Watchmen. Sir, Final Crisis is no Watchmen.
I've watched the 1988 Vice-Presidential debate. I watched the debate; the debate is a favorite of mine. You, Phaedrus, do not have the proper context or even the proper structure of that reference.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senator,_you_are_no_Jack_Kennedy
You cannot have the advancement in comic storytelling without what came before.
I'm saying, I think some of the least desirable qualities of modern comics are owed to Stan Lee, and I wish that we
didn't have what we have now: the institutionalization, the sterilization and stagnation of the form, story decompression (which comes about because of the soap opera-fication of the form, which is down to Stan Lee), all these things are owed to Stan Lee. Everything good about modern superhero comics has come from people either consciously or unconsciously moving
away from Stan Lee's contributions: Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Warren Ellis, Mark Waid. Everything bad comes from his imitators: Brian Bendis, Brian Bendis, Geoff Johns (even though I do love most of Johns' work), and Brian Bendis.
And, to dismiss all that shows how you are simply going to put your feet in the sand and say, "I'm not budging in my stance, no matter what anyone else says." By movie standards, the classic films of the 80's, especially horror and sci-fi, also don't hold up. The visuals are almost horrendous to look at. But, without ET you don't have A.I..
Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, and ET hold up
just fine today. I've watched them again. You could
maybe argue that the original Star Wars film doesn't quite hold up as well--there are some holes in the visuals--but that's only in the effects department. The basic quality of the film is still very high, even by today's standards. Certainly better than most modern sci-fi films (including the first two Star Wars prequels, and maybe even Revenge of the Sith.) Whereas the opposite is true of Stan Lee's comics: the visuals and effects are
astonishingly good, and the actual quality of the writing could almost not possibly be worse.
When I was a kid in the 80's, comics HAD to be written more to kids.
Stan wasn't writing a lot in the 80s.
Secret Wars HAD to be told the way it was.
No it did not. Children are not stupid. I mean, they
are, but they're smarter than people think. Children bought DC's Legends, for example, which was really one of the smartest and best events ever. Children bought DC's Invasion!, probably one of the top three comic book events ever, in terms of execution and quality. Children don't have to be written
down to, at least not to the degree which Secret Wars was written down. It was just some cosmic being grabbing up a bunch of top-selling characters and making them fight! That kind of contrivance is only allowable for JLA/Avengers or other DC/Marvel crossovers, events which by their very nature
have to be contrived and whimsical with no long-term effects.
In retrospect, when I was buying Watchmen in '86 and '87, there was not a lot of people picking up this comic. It wasn't being embraced for the groundbreaking storytelling at the time.
Groundbreaking art never is. Let's make a bet. If in 20 years, people aren't having this same exchange over Final Crisis, I'll PayPal you five bucks. If they are, you PayPal me five bucks. Or five of the currency of whatever nation has finally ended our imperialistic reign and conquered us.
Marvel had a Vertigo imprint type of line, too. Remember Epic?
Not really, no. What great art did Epic produce?
Sadly, sales equals success
Vertigo doesn't sell well. It remains critically successful.
That's just smart business, especially after their financial crisis in the 90s.
In other publishing businesses, the successful company will often keep a struggling but artistically credible title alive longer than it has a right to be, because it gives them artistic credibility, or it appeals to a certain demographic that would otherwise buy nothing, or someone high up in the company likes it. (For example, LIFE magazine survived much longer than it should have for this reason.) But in comics, Marvel doesn't exercise its market power in that way.
I'm sure if you ask the higher-ups at DC what they'd rather have, Final Crisis or Secret Invasion, they would grab up Secret Invasion in a second.
Yes, business people are scum. Every one of them. At the point where dollars and influence and power and progress and material/socioeconomic success become your measure of worth, then you've failed as a human being.
(And, really...I do think you are overhyping what you think is "Watchmen-worthy" storytelling. Final Crisis isn't difficult to read because it's presenting such grandious ideas...it's difficult to read because it's very choppy in it's storytelling, and Morrison is trying to throw in everything he can into a single issue.)
One of its grandiose ideas
is to experiment with that kind of storytelling. Do you really think Grant Morrison couldn't have told this story in a more traditional way? Do you really think that this was Morrison being forced from a preferred 12 issues into a mandated seven? Nonsense. He already wrote this story in a more traditional way. It's called JLA: Rock of Ages (and even that was apparently too much for the fanboys, I've been told). He decided to retell that idea in a more important, artistically meaningful way.